Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Harvard students Abhinav Agrawal, Patrick Chun and Yasser Salem have launched a platform for students to signal interest to employers looking to hire MBA students. The premise of the platform is quite similar to the signaling mechanism used by the AEA, in that the scarcity of the signals is what creates credibility:

"Skydeck360 will go live in October, and will initially be available for only [1st year MBA] students. The tool is designed for simplicity: all students have to do is sign up on the Skydeck360 website and indicate their top choice companies. This data will then be automatically aggregated and shared with recruiters by Skydeck360 in early November."

One interesting facet of the platform is that it is run as an entrepreneurial venture, rather than by the school itself, and so is an interesting marriage of signaling and entrepreneurial market design...